IPS: Medeiros earns record eighth pole at Texas

Thiago Medeiros earned the pole position for Saturday afternoon's Texas
100 at the high-banked Texas Motor Speedway located north of Fort Worth.
Medeiros averaged 189.592 mph around the 1.455-mile superspeedway,
earning his eighth pole of the ...

Thiago Medeiros earned the pole position for Saturday afternoon's Texas
100 at the high-banked Texas Motor Speedway located north of Fort Worth.
Medeiros averaged 189.592 mph around the 1.455-mile superspeedway,
earning his eighth pole of the season, a record that may stand for a long
time.

"We went back and looked at the data, made a few changes and kept the
car low on the track," said Medeiros, who was third fastest after two
practice sessions earlier in the day.

Medeiros spent very little time practicing in traffic, opting to trim the
car out and run alone. Leonardo Maia and Paul Dana, who ran faster in
practice, set their best laps running in a draft.

Travis Gregg will start on the outside pole, giving Sam Schmidt
Motorsports another sweep of the front row. "I thought I had the pole,"
said Gregg. "I didn't want to shift during the run, so I stayed in
fourth (gear). We may have lost a little bit by not using fifth gear, but
I'm happy to be starting on the front row for the third time in three
races."

Arie Luyendyk will start third after qualifying at 188.252 mph, two
tenths of a second slower than Medeiros. "I was little disappointed that
we drew the second spot in line for qualifying," said Luyendyk, as
temperatures dropped during qualifying. "I've run up front here before,
and hopefully, I can do it again tomorrow."

Temperatures dropped as the sun set behind the huge grandstands along the
front straight. "It was getting dark," said Medeiros, "so one of the
things I changed was my visor."

Jon Herb will start fourth, with Al Unser and Paul Dana rounding out the
top six.